


the pleasant dreams that people dream

by noiselesspatientspider



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, almost certainly going to be jossed by SiH 15, mask fic, spoilers through SiH 13, update: definitely jossed by SiH 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-15 07:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17524127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noiselesspatientspider/pseuds/noiselesspatientspider
Summary: Several conversations between old gods.





	the pleasant dreams that people dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [robotchangeling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotchangeling/gifts).



The forge is dark and cold, and Samot almost doesn’t see Maelgwyn sitting by the anvil but for the glint of gold moving on his finger. He’s hunched over, his broad shoulders bent, spinning Samothes’ wedding ring with his thumb.

“That’s not yours,” Samot says, and Maelgwyn’s head lifts, slow, cautious. His eyes are shadowed, too dark to see properly, and he looks at Samot as if the moment he makes eye contact, Samot will vanish. Samot’s heart clenches in his chest at it. 

“Are you here?” he asks. 

Samot shakes his head. “A projection, nothing more.” He’s stopped entering the forge himself, not with so much depending on him. Not when he can no longer configure himself back together. His left hand tightens, bare.

Maelgwyn twirls his ring. “Neither am I,” he says. “The mask.” Samot flinches. Something is different about him– his smile less cruel, perhaps. Samot has left him alone too long.

“Maelgwyn–” Maelgwyn begins, then falls silent. “I came to look for him.” 

Samot blinks at him. He pauses, lets his anger settle around him like a cloak. “Is this your revenge, then? Not just to wear his face, but to pretend to be him? To lie to me?” 

Maelgwyn looks stricken. “No,” he says. “I’m in the sword. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve built something there, Samot. I wish you could see it.” His eyes soften in a way Maelgwyn had never let them, a simple pride in accomplishment that their son had always pushed away. 

Something about the curl of his eyes– “You’re dead,” Samot says to the man who moves like Samothes, whose eyes even in the shadowy forge are dark. He lets his magic flare out, brief and bright. A white disk shines above Samothes’ head, a hammer of light in his hand. The brilliance fades, leaving spots dancing in Samot’s vision. 

He is not a creature built for belief. But Maelgwyn isn’t here, the traces of him years old. Samothes is. 

“Do you know where he is. What happened,” Samot asks. He doesn’t want to know. He can’t not. 

“No,” Samothes says. “But I can’t feel him anymore.” 

“Neither can I.” Samot is still standing, in his white cloak and his finery and his crown. “Even after– even when he stopped being himself, I could always feel him.” Maelgwyn had always felt like discomfort– the good kind, at first, a budding tooth, the pain of bones stretching. And at the end, like a canker sore, like an open wound. He pulls his cloak tighter around his shoulders. “But I haven’t for years.”

He hadn’t thought anything of it, then. He had assumed Maelgwyn had shut him out intentionally, when the prayers stopped coming. 

Samothes nods. He takes a heavy breath. “They told me he’d died, but I’ve never been good at accepting things on faith.”

Between them stretches the stone floor, marked with soot and indefinable stains. The forge is bare of implements, of any sign of inhabitance, a tangled ruin. It smells choked and green, like growing things, like rot. 

Samot aches. Samothes is a projection, and he himself is an illusion, and they have not seen each other for uncountable years. Their son is gone and he has no more rage left in him, that fire banked long ago. He wonders if Samothes really looks like this, his hair longer, the wrinkles around his eyes kinder. 

He should be asking Samothes where the sword is, how to get him out. There’s still time. They had been stronger, together, and now at the end of things they should be working together, should combine forces. He should be planning, should be–

“Husband,” Samothes says, softly, and Samot realizes he’s weeping, strangled half-sobs erupting out of him without his knowledge or permission. 

“Don’t,” he says, “don’t comfort me.” 

Samothes lets his hand fall. “We both know I was never very good at that.” His face is half-obscured in the darkness. “Husband,” he says, again, and his voice changes timbre, layering on itself like a clamoring bell. “Samot, I–” he looks over his shoulder. And there is a flash of light, too bright to bear, and the crash of a wave, and when Samot’s vision clears, there is only ocean foam on the flagstones where Samothes’ feet had been. 

He drops the projection, climbs the tower to the very top, looks out over Hieron and breathes the acrid air. Smoke on the wind today, the scent of burning hot and thick. He fills his lungs with it till he feels sick.

 

Samot doesn’t expect to see him again. But one evening he leaves his courtiers and pushes open the door to his chambers and finds Samothes sitting at his desk in the twilight, gazing out the window behind it. He’s pulled the curtains all the way back. 

Samot’s windows face north. The starstuff rises sharp and bright around the city’s domes and arches and tumbling alleys. Beyond their strictures, fires blaze in the distance, pocked with sickening gaps.

Samot walks past him and yanks the curtains closed, startling Samothes out of his reverie. “Are you here?” Samot asks, turning to face him. 

“No,” Samothes spreads his hands. “I’m using the mask again. I can’t come back, Samot.” 

Samot can’t help it. He winces. The idea of Samothes using the mask he’d last seen just before his death– Samot’s own face gleaming down at him, grinning– he hates it. “You shouldn’t use that,” he says, busying himself with the curtain tie. “It’s unreliable.” 

“If it lets me see you, it’s worth it.” Samothes sets his jaw. “I won’t apologize for that.”

Samot’s laugh catches in his throat. “No,” he says. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

They sit as the twilight fades into darkness. Samothes tells him about Aubade, about the visitors there. About Charter, about their plans. Samot tells him about the City of First Light, about his courtiers, about the musicians he’s hired. The mundanities of day-to-day governance. They do not speak about Samol, or the crumbling world outside the window. 

Samothes tells him about Hadrian, about the sword he’d crafted. He takes such simple pride in creation. 

“A sword should have a sheath, shouldn’t it?” Samot asks. “I’ll make him one.” 

They spend the night sketching out the details together, a familiar dance. Samothes bends over his shoulder and smudges Samot’s sketches with blunt fingers, too eager to let the ink dry. 

“Do you think he was alone?” Samot asks. He hasn’t been able to stop prodding at Maelgwyn’s absence, the aching gap in his magic. Once reminded of it, he finds it as painful as his presence ever was.

“No,” Samothes says. “I can’t imagine he was.” He clenches his fists on his knees, then releases them slowly. “It does not provide much comfort, though.” 

Twilight fades into darkness, and then back into the gray just before dawn.  
“I should go,” Samothes says, rising from his chair. He pauses. “But I’ll be back, if you’ll have me.”

Samot looks at Samothes, the strong lines of him. “Of course.”

Samothes smiles like it takes him by surprise. Samot has missed the way it breaks across his face. He reaches for Samothes’ hand, lets his own hover just above it. “Go,” he says. “I’ll see you again.”

He thinks their hands touch just before Samothes vanishes, but he can’t be sure.

He has Samothes from twilight to twilight for days. Samot, grown sentimental in his old age, brings up an orcish music box. He holds out his hand for Samothes to take, holding his breath unconsciously, unsure of the limits of the mask. But Samot has cheated reality itself so many times, and Samothes’ hand lands firm in his. 

He whirls Samothes around the room. They have not forgotten this, how to move together, when to pull, when to pause, the balance and counterbalance, delicate and deliberate and forceful as the fall of Samothes’ hammer. 

“Husband,” Samothes says, drawing him close, his eyes bright. Samot’s bare left hand tightens on his arm. 

“I–” he begins.

Samothes’ smile dims, and he leans away slightly. Samot pulls him back in, and there are few enough words after that.

It cannot last. They are neither of them temperate men, and the weight of everything they have left unsaid topples over eventually. It’s a stupid thing, probably. Samot cannot remember what spurs him to say something bright and desperate and cutting, but he says it.

Samothes stands. “If I am– unwelcome,” he says. “I can go. I wanted to see you again, in a place untainted by our son’s blood. But I will not stay if you wish me elsewhere.”

Samot does not speak. All those words eaten and he doesn’t have any left. Samothes is reaching towards his face, towards where he knows the mask sits, when he finally finds speech. “We have all killed each other all over Hieron,” he says. “In the places our blood hasn’t touched yet, our father is dying. Where would you go that that would not follow?”

“My tomb,” says Samothes, his smile gentle. “I told you, I’m inside the sword. The mages were right, but not in the way any of us thought.”

Samot’s mouth tightens. 

“I didn’t come here to hash out old arguments, Samot,” he says. “But you know as well as I do there’s nothing we can do to save him. All we can do is delay the inevitable.” His hand tightens on the chair. “Remember what our father used to say? We built Hieron on Nothing. And he was right. Layer on layer, cemented with blood and anger and old family quarrels, and finally Nothing came for us.”

He squares his jaw. “I’ve built something– we’ve built something, all of us there, together. Something new, something free of the history that’s eating at the roots of this place.” He looks like he really believes it, is the thing, golden in the lamplight. King sits so easy on his shoulders.

Samot reaches for him. He cannot move with gentleness; he has forgotten how. He fists his hands in Samothes’ shirt. “I will not abandon the things we have built, the people who depend on us, again. How do you think we got into this mess? What will you do when Nothing comes for your kingdom? Will you cast them aside and build another set of toys?” He lets go, smooths his hands over Samothes’ chest. Lets his voice go cruel. “But if you care more about your ego than helping people, go ahead. I won’t see you again.”

Samothes’ mouth twists, and the space he occupies vanishes. Samot stumbles forward at the sudden absence of him. Under his feet, the layers of Hieron stretch down towards nothing, lamina and strata endlessly repeating, themes with variations, until the whole structure collapses. 

Samot finds the sword in the hands of an Ordennan woman with scarred hands and a ready fist. Or rather, Samot sees the sword on her hip as she hovers at the door to the room where his deathbed is, talking in hushed tones with Hadrian. He hadn’t expected Hella to look so afraid, after everything Samothes had told him about her. But perhaps she’s never seen a dying god before.

He beckons her over. “You have to stab me with that sword,” he says, weakly. She does not take this well. Samot is exhausted; Hella is terrified and furious; Hadrian is a poor peacemaker. The conversation devolves from there. 

“I won’t kill another god,” she says. “Your family has to stop _doing_ this to me.”

“Hella, that sword is made of the Heat and the Dark. So am I.” He opens his palms, shows them shot through with void. “When that sword enters my body, there will be a split second where those two nothings will collide, and that energy– I could use that to power the sun, if I needed to.” Samot takes a breath. It hurts. “I don’t need to. I just need to bring one back.”

Hella crosses her arms. “What if he doesn’t want to go with you?”

Samot smiles faintly. “Then I’ll come back alone, and I’ll try something else.” He lets his head fall back on the pillow.

He can hear Hadrian admonishing Hella, and her angry defenses, and he smiles. His cousin picked well, all things considered. 

They do not have a lot of time. Hella and Hadrian sneak him out a few nights later, disguised as laundry.

Samot floats on his back in the river, Hadrian’s hands firm under his back. His white robes cling to his body. The river is very, very cold. His wounds drink it deep like open mouths. 

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Hella says.

“It will.” Samot cannot fill his voice with divine certainty. He fills it with desperation instead. “Give me a day.” 

Her mouth is pinched. “We don’t need him.” 

Hadrian looks at her. Samot can see his jaw from below, firm and steady as his hands. “You don’t have to do this, Hella,” he says, and holds his hand out for her sword.

“No,” she says, “but you don’t either.” 

Hadrian smiles. Samot cannot see what it looks like from this angle, just the curve of his mouth. He thinks it must be beautiful, because she nods and hands him the blade.

Hadrian pulls Samot close and plunges the blade into the open wound in his side. His smile _is_ beautiful. And then there is nothing, a hot and terrible and encroaching howl, and Samot takes it in his fists and teeth and claws and _twists._

He lands heavily on a parapet, water streaming from his clothes. His hands are whole, though, when he looks down at them. Samothes turns. “You’ve changed your mind then,” he says. “Coming here to hide away with me?”

“No,” Samot says. “I’ve come to get you out.”

Samothes’ mouth twists. “I can’t come with you,” he says. “I won’t.”

“Then we are at an impasse,” Samot says.

Samothes’ hands curl on the railing. “It seems so.”

There is a beat of painful silence. “Do you have a towel?” Samot asks. 

The palace is quiet, the rooms Samothes shows him to thick with dust. Samothes pauses at the door, a little sheepish. “I didn’t expect anything. I just thought–” and he opens the door to a sunny room. Through a set of doors, a broad balcony overlooks the sparkling ocean. 

Bookshelves, and a desk, and an easel in the room beyond, and a broad bed with a canopy that Samot pulls his eyes hurriedly from. An inexact copy of his rooms in Samothes’ palace, but easier, lighter. Samothes had tended to be heavy-handed in his architecture, but this space feels grown rather than constructed. It doesn't tell him how to move around it, it offers itself up as a series of choices. 

“Thank you,” he says. Samothes nods. Samot doesn’t know what else to say. The waves throw patterns of light onto the arched ceiling, dancing off the tiles there. 

“Will you join me for dinner?” Samothes asks. “Or should I have a tray sent up?” 

“It’s been too long since we ate together,” Samot says. 

Samothes hasn’t let go of the doorknob since opening the door, but his fist relaxes at this. He smiles faintly. “Yes,” he says. “It has.”

The table is far too long for the two of them, and Samot takes mercy on Samothes after ten minutes and takes his plate to sit next to him. “I didn’t come here to stare at you from thirty feet away,” he says, moving a bowl of confections to make room for himself. He raises a glass, once he’s settled in. “To the future,” he says. 

Samothes smiles at him, broad and bright and broken. “To the past.” He clinks his glass against Samot’s. The sound is swallowed by the waves.

“Why did you come?” Samothes asks, after the plates have been cleared away. They lean against the balcony. “You know I can’t leave.”

Samot huffs a laugh. “You won’t leave, I know. I hoped, though.” He looks down at the waves below them. “And I suppose I wanted to see you,” he says. “I’m dying, and I didn’t want to be alone again.”

“We’re all dying,” Samothes says. He won’t look at Samot, only the gleaming wall of starstuff that rises around the island. Lightning rises to meet it and is rebuffed.

“No,” Samot says. “Back in Hieron my body was riddled with the same cancer that is eating our father. It didn’t follow me, but it’s waiting, and that is a battle not even I can win.”

Samothes’ jaw tightens. There are no stars here, no moon either. Samot sees his expression only by the faint light from Chapter’s wall, and the flickering of torches inside the palace. 

He sighs. “Thank you for dinner.” He’s halfway to the door when Samothes speaks again. 

“But you’re still going back,” Samothes says. “You, who always clung with bloody-knuckle desperation to the life you’d clawed your way into, you’re going to walk back out of here to what? Die slow, die ugly? Die quiet in a bed next to our father?” 

Samot spins around. “I am going back to fight,” he spits. “I civilized myself, made myself the god of wine and books and pleasure. But don’t forget that I was a piece of nothing first. I am the last wolf alive, and I am going to die with blood in my teeth.”

Samothes’ eyes are soft and sad. “Oh husband,” he says, “I have never forgotten your claws.”

Samot’s mouth twists. “No,” he says. “No, nor forgiven me them either.” He leaves Samothes at the empty table under the empty sky. Samothes does not follow.

In the night, he hears a knock at the door of his rooms. He has been sitting at the desk Samothes built for him, knowing he would never use it, its drawers full of charcoal and paint and parchment that would never be touched. He has studiously been not touching them.

Samothes comes in. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again,” he begins. 

“Please don’t,” Samot says. He holds out his hand. “We have so little time. Dance with me.”

Samothes takes his hand. His ring clinks cool against the one on Samot’s finger, and Samothes rubs his thumb against it, eyes crinkling, and pulls him to his feet. They spin around the room to the crash of the waves and the crack of the distant storm. The thunder will move closer, and in the morning Samot will try to ride it home. But until then they have this, hand in immovable hand. 

Samot rests his head on Samothes’ shoulder. Samothes buries his nose in his shorn hair. “Fight for me,” he says. “When you get back. I gave up too soon.” 

“I fight for myself, husband,” Samot says, a smile curling wicked in his mouth. “I always have.”

“Yes,” Samothes says. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

**Author's Note:**

> robotchangeling, I hope you like this! I tried not to make it too sad, but these two got away from me a little.
> 
> Come yell about sad gods with me at [shipyrds](twitter.com/shipyrds) on twitter!


End file.
